CX customers are buying into Oracle’s Modern Customer Experience vision as competitors innovate similarly

Data unification, enhancement and intelligence are key

Out from under the ERP and autonomous database narratives of Oracle’s (NYSE: ORCL) top executives, Oracle’s CX leadership was able to curate an inspiring event around its CX portfolio with themes of empowerment and valuing people’s time — both employees’ and customers’. The bulk of Oracle’s Modern CX event built on announcements made five months prior at Oracle OpenWorld 2018, most notably the capabilities that will be enabled through the launch of Oracle CX Unity and the acquisition of DataFox. These advancements will enable CX clients to engage with their customers in a more informed, timely and intelligent manner.

Through CX Unity, Oracle’s customer data platform, clients will be able to create and act on a unified customer profile that is retained and enriched within the persistent data store, for use across all other CX products, whether from Oracle or a third party. Ultimately, the goal is to leverage hyperpersonalized profiles that are updated from all CX systems in real time to best engage and delight customers. Integration across all front-office systems enables sales personnel to be aware of factors that may impact a sales opportunity, like a service ticket that implies sales personnel should hold off on a pursuit until a customer’s issue has been remedied.

The data curation assets that Oracle has acquired further enrich these customer profiles and contextual points. Augmenting the largely business-to-consumer (B2C)-oriented data that many of its previous acquisitions enabled, Oracle touted the ability of the acquired DataFox platform to utilize current, relevant market data to inform business-to-business (B2B) interactions, such as identifying when a prospective customer appoints a new executive or closes a new round of funding that may make the prospect more likely to purchase. These data assets, paired with the company’s first-party data, bolster Oracle’s Adaptive Intelligence Applications (AI Apps) portfolio, which is set to expand rapidly from eight to 17 AI Apps. Among those being added to the CX suite are Lead Optimization, Smart Talking Points, TAM Expansion and Churn Prediction.

Held in conjunction with Oracle’s Modern Business Experience, Oracle’s Modern Customer Experience brought together more than 4,000 customer engagement professionals to inspire a deeper understanding of the functionality Oracle is adding to its customer experience (CX) applications and prompt adoption against competitors’ offerings.

TBR Weekly Preview: April 1-5

As we start into the second quarter, we will be examining companies’ 1Q19 earnings as they release. For this week, look for more benchmarks and special reports.  

Friday

  • In our quarterly Healthcare IT Services Benchmark, we note that healthcare IT services vendors are finding it increasing difficult to scale revenues from existing provider clients simply on the coattails of prior health IT investments. Not only have health systems adopted a more judicious approach to their IT budgeting, but the burden is increasing on health IT vendors to deliver maximum ROI with every engagement. Pockets of growth do exist and new ones are emerging, even as the overall trend in health IT spend moderates. The benchmark scenario points out that the ground continues to shift beneath the feet of both health plans and their IT services vendors alike as digitization takes hold, mHealth tools are employed by increasingly tech-savvy health plan members, and the insights from data analytics become the new currency.
  • TBR’s 4Q18 Data Center Benchmark highlights the performance of key players in the data center infrastructure market. In our 4Q18 PowerPoint and Excel report bundle, technology spotlights include some recent developments in the quantum computing and high-performance computing spaces that will impact, whether directly or indirectly, the data center market landscape in the coming years. Additional highlights include the impact of the newly launched Lenovo-NetApp joint venture in China, the IBM Z product cycle, and the growing implications of political tensions on data center vendors’ financial performance. (Contact Stephanie Long for more analysis.)

If you missed the Accenture initial report from last week, see the TBR website.